Inside England's bid for first Netball World Cup as they aim to create history
England will kickstart their bid to win the Netball World Cup for the very first time when they face Barbados in their group opener on Friday evening.
Hopes are high inside the England camp ahead of the tournament in Cape Town, South Africa following recent performances and their third-place finish four years ago.
The Vitality Roses, who recently moved up to third in the world, narrowly lost out to New Zealand 45-47 in the 2019 World Cup semi-final, before going on to beat South Africa 58-42 in the bronze medal match.
It was the third successive time England had finished third at the World Cup - dating all the way back to 2011 - but there is a confidence among the squad that they can improve heading into this competition.
Since the last tournament in Liverpool, the Vitality Roses have beaten every side in the top five apart from Australia, with their last win over the world's no.1 ranked side coming in January 2019.
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Vice-captain Jade Clarke, who was part of the team that lost to New Zealand in that heart-breaking last-four defeat, is excited about England's chances heading into the World Cup.
Speaking to Mirror Sport, Clarke said: "The squad is really different but the aim is still the same. What drives us is making history and we’ve never got past the semi-final stage, but we feel we’re capable of that.
Jade Clarke has made 200 appearances for England (Getty Images)"We realise that at the end of this four-year cycle, there are more teams that are capable of getting into that final, but I think that makes it exciting for the World Cup."
Meanwhile, co-captain Layla Guscoth also spoke about England's prospects and she is hopeful the Vitality Roses can improve on fourth place at the Commonwealth Games in 2022 and the result at the most recent World Cup.
"I'd really like us to," she said. "I think I have seen every team in the top six in the world beat each other over the past five years, so you’re going to every single game thinking you could win, but also knowing the person you’re playing against is confident they can win too.
"So, for us, we want to perform better than we did at the Commonwealth Games and the World Cup. Every time we go out we want to improve on the last performance, but we are trying to focus on the processes we need to win each game."
Layla Guscoth is hopeful of England's chances at the World Cup (Getty Images)After another hectic Netball Super League season, the players joined up to Jess Thirlby's England camp last month - five weeks before the start of the World Cup. Having not played together since January, the Roses have had a number of friendly matches to get themselves ready for the tournament - including four games in five days.
But all the focus from the get-go was on the first Group B game against Barbados. England will also take on Malawi and Scotland in their pool. When asked about their opponents, Clarke and Guscoth were under no illusions about how tough and different those games will be.
Clarke said: "Barbados is an interesting one actually because they’ve just recruited Sasha and Kadeen Corbin who used to play for England Roses. We are quite familiar with them as they will bring a new flavour to their team.
"Scotland we know them quite well with lots of players in the Super League. And Malawi, we’ve had lots of games against them in the past few years and we’ve been fortunate. But they’ve got a completely different style - and that’s the good thing about a World Cup. You’ve got to be on it and prepared for each game."
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England have been preparing for the World Cup in South Africa (Getty Images)"We played Malawi in the Commonwealth Games, so we know quite a bit about them, and Scotland is down the road from us," Guscoth continued. "But Barbados have had quite a few changes in their personnel, with a couple of our former teammates going over there to play for them.
"I find with World Cups, there is a limited amount of footage you can get with some countries that don’t play as regularly as those that are in the top five or six. Most of it is learning on the job as much as trying to prepare yourselves with what you’re going to face. You’ve got to be quite adaptable to what you might not have seen before."
Netball in England has seen a mammoth growth in participants since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a report last year suggesting more than 150,000 Brits have taken up the game following the most recent World Cup. That number is expected to have grown beyond 200,000 before the 2023 tournament.
England won the Vitality Netball International Series against Jamaica in January (Getty Images)Clarke and Guscoth are now determined to spearhead more women (and even men) to get involved in netball, whether that be competitively or recreationally. They feel that performing well at the World Cup will put themselves on the right track to achieve that.
When asked about being a role model for young girls, Clarke said: "We want people to be able to see us, watch us play and we want to inspire the next generation. We want all the girls in the schools across the country to think they hope to be an England netballer, we want that to be possible.
"We relish the pressure, we love the pressure moments. We want to be in the gold medal game where the whole world is watching, that’s the great thing about this team. We want to say thank you to our fans and put in some good performances at the World Cup."
"I think netball is different from other sports in that we often have a good relationship with our fans," Guscoth added. "After games, we sign stuff and chat with the fans, we do have quite a lot of close contact and I think it’s quite important. It’s weird thinking of us as role models but I hope we can be positive influences to show you can be strong, sporty, lots of us have strings to our bow."
England World Cup squad: Imogen Allison (Wing Defence, Centre), Eleanor Cardwell (Goal Shooter, Goal Attack), Jade Clarke (Centre, Wing Defence), Funmi Fadoju (Goal Defence, Goal Keeper, Wing Defence), Layla Guscoth (Goal Defence, Wing Defence, Goal Keeper), Helen Housby (Goal Attack, Goal Shooter), Laura Malcolm (Centre, Wing Defence, Wing Attack), Geva Mentor (Goal Keeper), Natalie Metcalf (Wing Attack, Goal Attack), Chelsea Pitman (Wing Attack), Olivia Tchine (Goal Shooter), Fran Williams (Goal Defence, Goal Keeper)
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